Monday, March 12, 2018

After the recent school shootings in Florida, rival cable news channels and political factions chattered away day and night. They spewed words of explanation or blame, words of solace or rage, words of hopelessness or words proposing solutions. (For example, the mentally deranged executive vice president of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, proposed that school teachers pack heat, the better to shoot future gunslingers.) It's doubtful those words persuaded anyone.

In all that noise, one silent image went viral: Norman Rockwell's classic painting of a school teacher, altered to make a point:

Clear as a bell, it wordlessly reminded audiences of what we are at heart, and what we risk becoming.

Here is Rockwell's original version:

In the same month, the Smithsonian Institution published a cover story about the changing state of America. The benchmark it chose? Norman Rockwell.

The Smithsonian asked four brave illustrators to try their hand at updating the themes in Rockwell's famous "Four Freedoms." series. (They did not do so well):

At the same time, the Chicago History Museum unveiled a prominent new installation showing Rockwell's take on the legendary cause of the Great Chicago Fire: Mrs. O' Leary's cow which supposedly kicked over a lantern:

The new permanent display, "Rockwell's Chicago."

There's nothing surprising about any of these uses for Rockwell's work. Not a week goes by without some prominent publication or institution invoking Rockwell as a standard.

Despite his lasting popularity-- or perhaps because of it-- we still hear the thin voices of postmodern art critics fulminating that Rockwell dealt in cliché. But if Rockwell dealt in mere clichés, his art would not continue to play such a significant role in today's vital discourse. His style may be out of fashion but his statements about human nature are undeniably true and enduring. This is the difference between clichés and archetypes.

Peter Viereck emphasized that archetypes must never be confused with stereotypes. Archetypes, he wrote, are the enduring values and traditions that have “grown out of the soil of history: slowly, painfully, organically.” These may be easily recognizable but they are very different from cliches or “the ephemeral, stereotyped values of the moment" that have “been manufactured out of the mechanical processes of mass production: quickly, painlessly, artificially."

The great Herman Melville shared this "reverence for archetypes." He believed archetypes to be at the core of the classic architecture of the golden age of Greece, claiming they saved Greek art from "innovating willfulness." (Innovating willfulness might well be the slogan for our culture.)

Rockwell was hugely prolific, and sometimes resorted to clichés during his long career. But in his stronger work he was an artist of archetypes. We find ourselves borrowing the power of his silent archetypes when the clamor of our turbo-charged, 3D digital video presentations with Dolby sound cease to hold our attention. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the definition of an "iconic" artist.

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

When Rembrandt declared bankruptcy in 1656, an official from the Amsterdam Insolvency Office showed up at his house at No. 4 Breestraat to inventory Rembrandt's possessions.

The possessions would have to be auctioned off to pay Rembrandt's debts. Moving from room to room, it didn't take long to figure out why Rembrandt had gone bankrupt. As Anthony Bailey wrote in his book, Rembrandt's House:

The house was crammed with pictures, stacked against and hanging from the walls.... [T]he collecting trait appears to have become an ungovernable compulsion.

Bailey reports that these pictures included "bits and pieces," scraps and sketches that Rembrandt fancied by his contemporaries, drawings from Italy, paintings from different periods in a variety of styles.

In part he collected... pieces that he could use in his works, not just for themselves but as pointers and touchstones. [B]ut his collection of pictures was huge and diverse. Rembrandt's collection was almost a museum.

Unlike a typical museum exhibition organized by a curator or art historian, de Sève has assembled work that appeals to his artist's eye.

He includes working drawings that reveal the thought processes of the artist:

Jules Feiffer

Preliminary sketches that reveal the original spark of inspiration before the concept has been refined and diminished.

Frazetta

Another Frazetta. Note how, even in this preliminary rough, each of the seven "green women" has a distinctive pose and role. Frazetta doesn't lump them all together in the background. This prelim contains all the DNA for the finished painting.

Frazetta

As one of the leading character designers for animated movies, de Sève seems to have a special interest in the evolution of sequential drawing, starting with the A.B. Frost's series of pen and ink illustrations in the 19th century...

A dog racing down the road...

...leaves disaster in its wake.

and moving on to Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur at the dawn of animation...

...before turning to great Disney art such as Preston Blair's famous hippopotamus ballerina from Fantasia and art from Lilo and Stitch.

There's strong pen and ink work by artists such as Heinrich Kley:

... and work by Arthur Rackham that reveals the artist's underlying sensitive pencil lines:

De Sève writes, "It's thrilling for me to see the half-erased pencil lines that reveal clues to the artist's thinking process and detours he or she traveled to get to the final artwork."

The exhibition also contains final work with interesting solutions by fellow illustrators:

Nick Galifianakis shows all we need to know about the child prodigy Mozart: the top of a wig and those tiny dangling feet. Note how the artist draws our attention to those little beribboned shoes by making them red against a stark white background.

And of course there are a number of examples by the master, Ronald Searle:

As fearless with watercolor as he is with ink.

As an example of de Sève's irreverent eye, he displays the work of his young daughters side by side with the work of the world's top professionals, and for perfectly legitimate reasons. He explains how he gains inspiration from both: "I know it’s a cliché to want to draw like a child, but honestly, look at the sheer inventiveness and variety in every heart on that page!"

Valentine from de Sève's daughter Paulina when she was five years old.

Paulina's picture exemplifies what makes an artist's exhibition so interesting. De Sève isn't misled by the pretensions and superficial considerations that preoccupy so many curators and art historians. Instead, he hones right in on the nutritional content; all marks on paper are judged on a level playing field.

At the entrance to the exhibit, De Sève writes: "The artist I've become is a result of the things I've learned, and continued to learn, from others."When the Amsterdam Insolvency Office finally shows up at de Sève's door, you'll want to be there for the auction.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Monday, February 12, 2018

This is my final example of an artist who drew in what might be called a slick, polished manner: Leonard Starr.

Like other artists we've observed this week, Starr could draw in a tight style:

And yet, take a close and look you'll see that, like the previous artists I've featured, he doesn't pursue realism slavishly. This zig-zag line in the man's hair, for example, adds a nice effect but could never be derived solely from tracing photographs:

Neither could Starr's restraint on the girl's face, or his tapered lines showing the volume of her hair.

Starr's drawing ability enabled him to stage his pictures in the most thoughtful or dramatic way. Unlike so many comic artists who are fashionable today, he was not hindered by a lack of skill.

Detail

Starr's figures were idealized, in accordance with the fashion of the times.

I suspect that many of today's audiences prefer a scruffy, unschooled style because it seems more sincere than idealized pictures by skilled artists. Sophisticated audiences would rather be shown the dark underlying truths than the glossy surfaces.

But is such closed minded skepticism toward idealistic images warranted? The ancient Greeks lived a harsher, more imperiled existence than we; feuding city states, corrupt politics and daily strife gave them plenty of reasons to be disillusioned about human nature. Yet they still devoted major room in their culture for the "illusion" of idealized beauty. (Clean lines, beautiful proportions, harmonious forms-- as Socrates said, "In portraying ideal types of beauty we bring together from many models the most beautiful features of each.") The parthenon, for example, was intended to be perfect, the embodiment of clean reason and perfection despite everything the Greeks knew from the savagery they had experienced.

Their minds were supple enough to appreciate that art could be both realistic and transcendent, both true and beautiful.

Like other artists featured this week, Drake was nimble with a pen and fearless with ink.

For years Drake shared a studio with his close friend Leonard Starr, who described Drake this way:

His models were the previous golden age pen and ink illustrators like Gibson, Flagg, Lowell, Coll, et. al, mainly because he couldn't afford paints. Oh the forces that shape our lives.... His brush strokes were used for solid black areas and as accents, very often arbitrarily placed, a heavy stroke ignoring the light source, as often, the top of Evie's hair. Arbitrary but Oh, how it worked.

In the 1980s, Drake realized that there was no longer sufficient demand for his sharp drawing skills, so he changed his style and became the artist for the more simplistic comic strip, Blondie.

Wednesday, February 07, 2018

Continuing our daily series of artists who draw in a slick, polished style...One current comic artist who draws sharp as a razor is Sean Murphy, creator of series such as Tokyo Ghost and Punk Rock Jesus.

Note how Murphy's range encompasses the sleek speed lines and mechanical drawing for that boat as well as the imagination and courage necessary for that heavy brush treatment of the explosion:

He's also not afraid of crowd scenes and angle shots. Here a group of adoring fans hound a character...

...causing her and her bodyguard to take refuge in a public restroom.

There has been some discussion in the last few posts about the importance of "organic unity" in art and not just resting on skilled draftsmanship alone. Murphy gives his stylish drawings a consistent dynamic look with his slashing brush strokes and aerodynamic forms. This is high energy drawing by an artist with the resources to operate safely at high speeds.